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Would Activision Actually Abandon the PS3?

playstation-3-game-console

Yesterday, there was a tremendous amount of hub-bub about Activision CEO Bobby Kotick’s comments about his company potentially removing support from Sony’s PlayStation 3 console.

For those that don’t recall, here’s what Kotick said that created the firestorm:

“I’m getting concerned about Sony; the PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don’t make it easy for me to support the platform. It’s expensive to develop for the console, and the Wii and the Xbox are just selling better. Games generate a better return on invested capital on the Xbox than on the PlayStation.

[...]

[Sony has] to cut the price, because if they don’t, the attach rates [the number of games each console owner buys] are likely to slow. If we are being realistic, we might have to stop supporting Sony.”

Sony responded fairly non-chalantly:

“PlayStation has tremendous momentum coming out of E3, and we are seeing positive growth with more than 350 titles slated to hit across all our platforms, including many anticipated games from our publishing partners,” said Playstation spokesman Patrick Seybold. “We enjoy healthy business relationships with and greatly value our publishing partners and are working closely with them to deliver the best entertainment experience.”

So, how likely is it for either parties to actually sever ties? To me and one prominent video game analyst — not very likely.

“Of course Bobby’s bluffing, and good for him,” said Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities to game blog VG247. “I think Bobby’s obviously interested in Sony selling as many PS3s as they possibly can, and he’s not happy with their penetration so far. I think he favors a price cut, and would rather see one sooner than later.”

One look at Activision’s 2008 annual report should be enough to call Kotick’s bluff:

acticonsoles

As you can see, the PlayStation 3 in 2008 did provide the least amount of revenue for the company in the console segment — but $241 million in revenue on a $1.294 billion in revenue still represents 18.6 percent of Activision’s console business. That might not seem extremely significant to everyone reading, but in the corporate and financial world, the PlayStation 3 inhabits a chunk of revenue and profit that provides growth potential to prospective investors. In short, dropping PlayStation 3 support would be akin to committing stock price suicide.

While it might have been a nice attention-grabbing headline, there is absolutely no chance — PlayStation 3 price cut or no — that Kotick would ever consider dropping PlayStation 3 support.

Rest easy, PlayStation 3 owners.

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